Tag: January 2021

Change in Venue…

On a cold, windy January day, I took a walk to familiarize myself with another area of Brooklyn. As I do on such sorties, I have a camera in hand. It’s just an integral part of me carrying that, along with a fountain pen. In combination, perhaps an odd idiosyncrasy. Go figure.

There has been so much news about struggling businesses in an economy best described as uncertain if not scary. Regardless of your own standing, uncertainty feeds fear. It’s like that for many, even those who still have a job. There have been a myriad of changes in less than a year, and many of them are unprecedented as we know.

And yet I’m encouraged with the way businesses evolve, regardless of the risks and constraints of an unrelenting pandemic. Adaptation abounds. As I pass several restaurants and eateries small and large, I can’t help but notice the physical changes in these venues. Where there was once a length of curb used for parking has now been pre-empted by saw horses and orange pylons, cuts of plywood fashioned into walls and even structures with lockable doors, sliding windows, and other things that can make or break an outdoor dining experience. Being early in the day, most of these venues were still closed.

The way these dining improvisations unfold reminds me of a line from Shakespeare’s Richard III, which says,

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

Summer is still several months away, but we can long for it. For now, our discontent, our malaise and all that has transpired has made burdens to bear heavier by the frigid air. Winter can represent discontent, but I can also make an argument for the hot, unbearably humid days of summer offering the same.

Bricks and mortars have had to survive with 25% capacity. As anyone who owns a restaurant or pub will tell you, to survive is one thing, but to thrive means sustainability. And sustainability means recency and frequency of patrons through limited seating, curbside pick-up and delivery. All modes need to be deployed.

Let’s take the 80-20 rule, where 80% of a business is generated by 20% of the total customer base, and extrapolate to a pandemic index of sorts. I think if this entire 20% group supports their favorite restaurant, diner, food wagon or cart at least once a week for say the first 6 months of 2021, well, that recency and frequency in commerce and service could make a difference. For patrons, a feeling of outreach and support; for the eateries, a glimmer of hope and possibilities heretofore unseen if not improbable.

Perhaps my thinking is too simplistic, too unrefined and certainly enough to have my MBA stripped from my CV. But who am I not to think outside the box, to consider actions however “small” as things unworthy of effort and possibility? Because there’s enough doubt to go around these days, I’ll let Shakespeare have the last word:

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose oft what we might win, by fearing to attempt…

Snow Dome

On MLK day at Glendale Falls

I was in a different bubble yesterday, away from the angst, the uncertainties, the frustration and disappointment of recent times. It was wonderfully quiet save the waterfall cascading over an edge some 20-yards away. That rushing sound had a soft, roundness to it, a barrier or suppressor of sorts that kept disheartening sentiments at bay.

I was in a snow dome.

With 4-inches already on the ground, a sudden burst of flakes quietly fell, quickly dusting tree limbs as well as foot prints left by other visitors: someone in a Sorel, perhaps a size 10 1/2 which lay opposite the basket imprints from a hiking staff. Only one set of human footprints was there, the other prints from a deer, a squirrel, a group of birds and others I wasn’t sure of or missed altogether.

This kind of place—where the simplest of what is before and around you—covers the burrs of unhealthy tensions and feelings. Indeed, a blanket comes to mind when snow covers a landscape. On some days—for me anyway—it’s more like a comforter. A comforter does not align with what snow feels like. Visually however, is a different matter. There is loft, an expanse of uniformity and balance that can remind one of a comforter. The solitude, the absence of man-made noise, reinforces that sense of comfort. Within my snow dome comes a particular calm that allows me to think and feel purposefully and openly. I consider possibilities beyond the familiar and rote. I dwell beyond the probable, but lie in the realm of things that are possible. As Martin Luther King, Jr. noted:

“Put yourself in a state of mind where you say to yourself, ‘here is an opportunity for me to celebrate like never before by my own power, my own ability to get myself to do what is necessary.'”

The saying, “this quiet, this silence is deafening…” runs contrary to my time in this snow dome. I feel reassured, positive, even happy. Embraced by such stillness, you can hear yourself think. You can engage all your senses with minimal distraction. You come face-to-face with who you are and in spite of yourself, you can choose to dwell in what should have happened—and thus remain predictably the same as always—or take a contrarian step, one that could make a difference. I’ll let Martin Luther King, Jr. have the last word. He has captured an enduring leitmotif of the human condition:

“The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo and has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of something new.”